Don't Look Behind You and Other True Cases (35 page)

While Hill was talking to the young woman, a teenage boy who lived with his parents in the Echo Lake Motel, which was several hundred yards from the lake’s edge, made an even more ominous discovery. Attracted by the popping of firecrackers near the lake, he had wandered down the path that was an easement for motel visitors to reach the beach. He’d stopped for a few moments in a grassy clearing to watch a father and his three youngsters as they lit firecrackers. Then the boy headed toward the lake.

He was surprised to find some things on the ground directly ahead of him that didn’t belong there. There was a woman’s black purse—its contents scattered all over the grass. There was an address book, papers, cosmetics, and a checkbook in addition to the myriad items most women carry in their handbags. There was also a bra, a ring, and a broken necklace.

Near the purse, the grass itself appeared to be soaked in a wide pool of thickening blood that was at least three feet long and two feet wide.

The teenager backed away and ran to tell the man he had seen setting off firecrackers. Warning his own youngsters to stay back, the man walked to the bloodstained area. He, too, viewed the scattered possessions, noting there was a bloodstained card from Seattle Children’s Hospital and a pack of Kool cigarettes, its label almost obliterated with drying blood.

He stepped to the shallows where he stared with apprehension into the weed-choked water. A pair of red hot pants and a single nylon stocking floated lazily near the shore.

“You stay here,” he told the boy. “Don’t let anyone down here. I’m calling the sheriff.”

Detective Sergeant Bob Schmitz and Deputy Ben Colwell of the sheriff’s north precinct sped to the Echo Lake address. They found Deputy Jess Hill already at the lake, and he had just learned from the radio dispatcher about the newest clothing discoveries that had been found just around an outjutting section of the shoreline.

The torn jacket and the hot pants and single stocking had probably been thrown in the lake at the same spot and then drifted apart with the tide.

Whatever had happened here at the now-serene lakeside didn’t look good. Detectives Dan Nolan and James McGonagle soon arrived to join in figuring out the mystery at Echo Lake.

Viewing the blood-soaked patch of grass and the jumble of feminine paraphernalia on the ground, the detective
crew had little doubt that someone had been grievously injured on the spot—if not killed.

They hoped that the woman—clearly it
was
a female—who had bled this much might have been rushed to a hospital by someone who had witnessed an accident or even a fight.

Already a group of curious bystanders had been drawn to the scene when they saw the ever-increasing number of squad cars parked on the road above. The investigators immediately cordoned off the lakeshore before anyone could edge too close and trample what could be vital physical evidence.

The sheriff’s detectives stepped out on a dock adjoining the beach area. Despite the weeds, the water near shore was relatively clear and they could see not only the hot pants and stocking the teenager had discovered but several other items that did not belong in the lake: a multicolored change purse, a lipstick case, and a small plastic-bound case. There was, however, no sign of any victim of an attack that had surely taken place.

The woman who had shed so much blood had either managed to escape, naked, or she was in the lake floating silently just beyond the scope of their vision.

The detectives on the scene asked the police radio dispatcher to contact sheriff’s divers George Zimmerman and Joseph Dollinger. The expert swimmers cut short their own Fourth of July celebrations with their families at once and drove to Echo Lake.

They arrived about 6:30 p.m., entered the water, and began to swim slowly side by side out into increasingly
deeper water. The detectives waited tensely on shore as the silent search was carried out.

It only took ten minutes before Deputy Zimmerman suddenly dove toward the bottom and surfaced holding the body of a woman. He had spotted her lying facedown on the bottom in about twelve feet of water some twenty-five feet from shore. He and Dollinger brought the woman’s body to shore. She was completely nude, save for the shredded remnants of a nylon stocking clinging to her right foot.

She wore a wedding band on her left ring finger.

The detectives who observed the petite form could only guess that she might have been attractive in life. Although the tiny woman’s figure was voluptuous and well proportioned, her face—beneath wet strands of longish blond hair—was a ruin. Her forehead was split above her right eye, and there were open wounds over and under that eye as well as on the top and sides of her nose. Ugly bruises marked each side of her chin and two rows of round bruises—as if fingers had pressed deeply into her flesh—were apparent on the underside of her left arm.

The dead woman appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties and was probably about five feet tall. She could not weigh more than 110 or 115 pounds.

“She hasn’t been dead long,” Nolan commented. “Her body is perfectly preserved. On a beach as popular as this one, her purse and clothes didn’t go unobserved for long.”

“I wonder what she could have done or said to make someone this angry,” Ben Colwell muttered. “She’s been hit again and again—and hit hard. She sure wouldn’t make
much of an opponent for anyone. She’s just a little bit of a thing.”

As they waited for deputy medical examiners from Dr. Gale Wilson’s office, detectives carefully placed plastic bags around the victim’s hands and secured them at the wrists to preserve possible evidence under her fingernails.

At 7:15 p.m. coroner’s deputies removed the body to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office to await a postmortem examination.

In early July, it doesn’t get dark in the Northwest until almost ten p.m., and Sergeant Schmitz, Deputy Colwell, and detectives Nolan and McGonagle remained at the body site until it was fully dark, meticulously searching the shoreline and the shallows for every possible piece of evidence, anything that might somehow explain the incredible violence that had taken place and the motive behind it.

The two divers moved once again into the lake. This time they retrieved a wine-red jacket that obviously matched the short shorts found earlier. The jacket had been ripped to tatters. There was also a beige blouse—styled in leotard fashion—of sheer stretch fabric with panties attached. However, the blouse had been ripped into two pieces and the panty half floated separately. The divers swam in widening circles one hundred feet from shore searching the bottom of the lake for a possible murder weapon.

They found no weapon. Seventy-five feet from shore, Deputy Zimmerman located a woman’s white crisscross sandal in new condition. Could someone have thrown it
that far? Or had the wind stirring up the waves carried it there?

Dan Nolan photographed the scene and all the evidence and then assisted McGonagle as they took triangulation measurements of the area and bagged the evidence in plastic containers. The triangulations would allow them to pinpoint exactly where the woman’s body and the evidence had been—if they had to return to the site or needed to re-create it.

As they went over the scattered contents of the black purse, they consistently found one name: Mrs. Bethany Stokesberry.* Credit cards, doctor’s appointment cards, and letters alike bore that name and gave an address, some six or seven blocks south of Echo Lake.

“I don’t think there’s much question that the dead woman is Bethany Stokesberry,” Nolan remarked. “If she has a family at this address, we can probably get positive identification tonight.”

McGonagle nodded grimly. No amount of experience in homicide investigation can inure an officer to the dreaded task of informing a family that someone they loved is dead.

As the investigative crew finished gathering evidence and darkness settled over the peaceful setting, it fell to Dan Nolan to contact possible family members at the residence whose address appeared in the victim’s belongings. Nolan, a veteran of the King County Police Department, is a native of Ireland, a congenial soft-spoken man whose voice still carries a trace of brogue in relaxed moments.

Now he approached a pleasant dwelling where he was greeted by a man in his thirties who said he was Beth Stokesberry’s husband, Martin.

The worried husband fought for composure as he said he and Beth had been married for ten years. Responding to Nolan’s gentle questions, Martin answered that his wife was missing.

“She didn’t come home last night,” he said anxiously. “And I haven’t heard any word from her today either. That isn’t at all like her—she always calls.”

Bethany, whom Stokesberry said he had met and married in Scotland while he was stationed there in the air force, had occasionally stayed away all night with friends. “I didn’t want to file a missing persons report on her—and embarrass her,” he said. “But I’m really worried now. It isn’t like her to be gone for more than twenty-four hours.”

Stokesberry agreed to accompany Dan Nolan to the King County Medical Examiner’s Office in downtown Seattle to view the body of the woman taken from the lake.

As the long drawer slid out from a wall of body containers, Martin Stokesberry turned pale.

“It’s her,” he said, barely breathing. “It’s my wife, Bethany.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes—there’s no doubt at all.”

When the shocked man was able to talk more, he told Nolan that he, his wife—who was thirty-one—and their two sons, seven and nine, had lived in Seattle for about four years, and that he had been employed by the same company as an electronics technician for five years.

She was a good mother, he said, but Bethany was at home with the boys all day and Stokesberry worked a lot of overtime. His wife missed the camaraderie of pubs that were neighborhood meeting spots in Scotland where everyone knew one another and drank a few pints with their friends or played darts.

“I was tired after working twelve-hour days,” Martin said, “and was usually glad to stay home with our boys while she went out for a few hours. She drove herself or she’d go with couples who were friends of ours.”

“Were you ever jealous—I mean, was it possible that she might have been seeing someone?” Nolan asked quietly.

“No. Never. We trusted each other.”

As Stokesberry described the night of July 3 to the detectives, he said he had driven his wife to the Frontier Tavern, a neighborhood meeting spot where she often went on weekend nights to drink a few beers and chat with friends. It had been between ten and ten thirty when they had arrived and Bethany had spotted a car that looked like one belonging to Brian and Susan, a couple who were friends of theirs.

Stokesberry warned his wife to be sure to come home with the couple. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about her. Bethany was wearing her new pantsuit and a red leatherette coat that evening, and carried about $60 in cash with her.

In response to further questions, Stokesberry confirmed that his wife smoked Kool cigarettes. He also emphasized that she could not swim. In fact, she was almost obsessively afraid of the water.

Stokesberry then explained that he himself had driven home because he had promised a friend—who was making his debut as a radio disc jockey—that he would tape his show that evening. He had turned on the recording device, alternately checking the transcription and watching a late movie. He couldn’t recall the name of the movie; he remembered only that it was some kind of war movie. He hadn’t watched it continuously.

At a little after 1 a.m., Stokesberry said he’d gone to bed for the night, confident that their mutual friends would give Bethany a ride home.

“When I left her off at the Frontier, that was the last time I saw her, and I didn’t hear anything from her until you [Detective Nolan] came to tell me that she was probably dead.”

Many husbands would have been jealous to have their wives go to taverns alone, but Martin Stokesberry again assured the investigators that he didn’t mind. He understood that she needed to have adult conversation and a few glasses of ale occasionally. He didn’t believe she was interested in any other men.

Even minutes count in homicide investigations, and, for the crew of King County homicide detectives, the combination of the holiday and the late-night hour when Bethany’s body was identified could not have been worse. Although the sheriff’s detectives were prepared to work all night on July Fourth, they had no luck in finding witnesses. Not only were many lakeside residents away from their homes on vacation, but when the investigators visited the Frontier Tavern, they found it was closed. Their phone calls to the number listed for the owner went unanswered.

Long after midnight, the weary detectives were forced to temporarily halt their search for Bethany Stokesberry’s killer.

However, a few hours of sleep were all they could get. They were up with the first filtered morning light.

Dan Nolan and Sergeant Don Actor were back in the north King County area early Monday morning. The tedious but vital door-to-door search began. They talked to many residents living in the houses surrounding Echo Lake.

In addition to the scores of homes in the area, there were two sprawling apartment complexes with almost a hundred expensive units facing the lake. Again and again, the two detectives received the same disappointing answers; either the occupants had been away from home the night before—or they had heard nothing unusual because of the boom of fireworks.

At length, Nolan and Actor struck pay dirt that at least gave them some estimate of the time of the attack on Bethany Stokesberry. A homeowner, who lived almost directly across the narrow lake from the spot where her belongings were found, told them that he had arrived home shortly after midnight. While he was fixing himself a late snack in the kitchen, he had been alarmed by what he termed a “penetrating, serious female scream.”

“I thought it might be just some hijinks because it was the Fourth of July, but it was frightening enough that I went outside on my dock to hear better. I carried my flashlight, but I couldn’t make out anything across the lake. It was absolutely still for moments and then I heard it again. It was definitely a woman, but all I could make out was the
word ‘help!’ I kept listening but there was nothing else. It was all quiet by about a quarter after twelve.”